Archives for June 2010

Stress

closet

Coincidentally, on a day when I was feeling particularly stressed, I opened my email box and found a message buried within the many random emails I get from mailing lists I don’t remember signing up for but often look forward to reading.

You must let the stress go – it is the only way you can bring what you want. The emotion of stress is saying strongly that you do NOT have what you want. Stress or tension is the absence of faith, and so to remove it all you have to do is increase your faith!

Sometimes it is easy to fall into a “woe is me” approach to life, allowing the stress and unhappiness to weigh you down. We forget the importance of counting our blessings and how doing that can actually relieve us of our stress.

I need to learn how to manage my stress because I am finding that it is taking over my life in negative, unproductive ways.

In happy, productive and inspiring news, I cleaned my desk and worked really hard today on prioritizing my tasks. I made a to-do list that was no more than 6 things. (Typically, my to-do lists will number in the 20’s) But today I wanted to be as effective and productive as possible and in order to do that you need to be efficient in deciding what needs to be done and what can be put at the end of the list. In other words, you put the items at the end of the list if they are the ones that are less pressing and don’t need to be finished immediately. And do you want to know what happened? I got everything done AND had time to spare. I stayed conscious of all of my actions throughout the day and would periodically ask myself if what I was doing was contributing to the greater cause (i.e., was it helping me lessen my work load). If it wasn’t, then I stopped doing it immediately. My stress level decreased and my accomplishments for the day were at an all time high. And I stayed on top of the clutter on my desk and threw things away!

{photo above is not my closet…but it is what I plan to someday provide for my future daughters. Clean, organized…and PINK!}

Organizing

clock

Ironically, the quote I am about to post could have been used for yesterday’s post, as well.

Attention is the most basic form of love.”- John Tarrant Roshi

I am reading a book on organization and it is giving me some great insight into the time vacuums that suck up our most valuable assets: the hours and minutes that make up a day. These distractions fight for our attention on a moment-by-moment basis. Email is one of the top culprits. Organization guru Julie Morgenstern has even written a book titled, NEVER CHECK EMAIL IN THE MORNING. I am a compulsive email checker. Admittedly, I have even been tempted to switch over to my email twice while composing this blog post. Being organized and effective with our time allows us to have the time to enjoy and pay attention to what is important to us. Every organizational expert says things along the same line, clean up the clutter, designate, minimize and be decisive. Never multi-task. As someone who does a million things at once and is always “connected” in some way to the electronic world and the instantaneous messages that bombard us all, this is going to be my own personal resolution. I am going to get ORGANIZED! I will do whatever it takes and see how it affects my life.  I hope you, dear readers, will join me on this journey.

Tomorrow’s Task: Clean off my desk. Pictures to come. (Be fair warned!)

Paying Attention

fort sewall

Today I went for a walk through my hometown. The sun was shining, the air was cool and there was a beautiful, heavy breeze blowing. I have spent the past 31 years of my life in this town and yet I think I really saw it for the first time today. Absolutely beautiful. Breathtaking. Stunning. These are the same streets I stumbled through as a giggling teenager. I went for grade school walks with my classmates down these cobblestone streets. I drove these historical streets as a newly minted driver, sixteen and tightly clutching the steering wheel. But today, it was the first time I really saw and appreciated the beauty right outside my back door. I believe that experiences enrich our souls and enliven our spirits. They inspire and teach. They allow us to appreciate the beauty in the every day and help us not take things for granted.

I could have spent the day hunched over a keyboard, staring blankly into a computer screen. I could have numbed my senses with a television show of the reality variety (a personal favorite of mine). But instead I chose to explore, to listen, to talk and to appreciate. Last year at this time I lost someone very special to me. I’m glad that this year was spent enjoying the beauty that is all around us. I sometimes think the secret to happiness is the ability to pay attention to and appreciate the little joys in life. They really are all around us, we just have to look for them.